The Namesake

Title: The Namesake

Author: Jhumpa Lahiri

Published: 2004

Genre: Fiction

Rating: 5 out of 5

I have been planning to read this book for quite a while now. Tried to read it two times before but some things in life took priority over reading the book. I had watched the movie a long time ago (and I hardly remember scenes from the movie which is good for reading the book). This is my first book by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Her style of writing is excellent with simple English and made me feel like one of the characters in the book.

Being an immigrant myself, I can totally relate to Ashima and Ashoke about the life they live - missing family, bringing up kids, new things to learn, meeting new friends, adapting oneself to the new environment and the culture clash kids go through sometimes.

The two scenes in the book was very touching to me where Gogol feels what his parents might have felt when their parents died and wonders how did they live here with such courage being on their own. The second one was the last chapter when Ashima is packing up her stuff after selling the house. That is written in such detail that I could see Ashima right in front of me doing everything as I read.

Overall it's a good book. I also felt that it was much difficult to bring up kids in a different culture in the 70s-80s than it is now. But I would think one would enjoy it more if one has a bit of knowledge about Indian culture and immigrant life.

Favorite lines from the book:

• He is terrified to see his mother, more than he had been to see his father's body in the morgue. He knows now the guilt that his parents carried inside, at being able to do nothing when their parents had died in India, of arriving weeks, sometimes months later, when there was nothing left to do.

•  For thirty-three years she missed her life in India. Now she will miss her job at the library, the women with whom she's worked. She will miss throwing parties. She will miss living with her daughter, the surprising companionship they have formed, going into Cambridge together to see old movies at the Brattle, teaching her to cook the food Sonia had complained of eating as a child. Se will miss the opportunity to drive, as she sometimes does on her way home from the library, to the university past the engineering building where her husband once worked. She will miss the country in which she had grown to know and love her husband. Though his ashes have been scattered into the Ganges, it is here, in this house and in this town, that he will continue to dwell in her mind.